Unruly Audiences and the Theater of Control in Early Modern London Controlling the Unruly Playgoer in Early Modern Drama Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama Series

Unruly Audiences and the Theater of Control in Early Modern London explores the effects of audience riots on the dramaturgy of early modern playwrights, arguing that playwrights from Marlowe to Brome often used their plays to control the physical reactions of their audience.

This study analyses how, out of anxiety that unruly audiences would destroy the nascent industry of professional drama in England, playwrights sought to limit the effect that their plays could have on the audience. They tried to construct playgoing through their drama in the hopes of creating a less-reactive, more pensive, and controlled playgoer. The result was the radical experimentation in dramaturgy that, in part, defines Renaissance drama.

Written for scholars of Early Modern and Renaissance Drama and Theatre, Theatre History, and Early Modern and Renaissance History, this book calls for a new focus on the local economic concerns of the theatre companies as a way to understand the motivation behind the drama of early modern London.

Introduction: The Alterity of Early Modern Audiences

Chapter 1: Audience Response to Performance: Fear of Riots, Closures and Unruly Playgoers

Chapter 2: Performance’s Response to Audience: The Relationship among Audience, Performance and Reality

Chapter 3: Fictional Audience’s Responses to Fictional Performances: The Didactic Role of Metadrama

Chapter 4: Unstable Texts, Active Readers; Stable Performances, Non-Reactive Playgoers

Chapter 5: Anti-Mimetic Drama: Performance’s Relationship to Reality and the Playgoer’s Interpretive Agency

Coda: Return to Malfi: The Secrecy of Performance and the Consequences of Constructing Playgoing

Eric Dunnum is an Assistant Professor of English at Campbell University.